


how sweet the moonlight sleeps

by notjodieyet



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M, Mentioned Twelfth Doctor, Present Tense, Soft Master (Doctor Who), The Master is a cat, bill just wants some sleep, pickled eggs (hopefully), she hates this entire spaceship and everybody on it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-08
Updated: 2020-10-08
Packaged: 2021-03-07 22:41:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,481
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26895352
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notjodieyet/pseuds/notjodieyet
Summary: Bill is woken up at far too early in the morning for an extremely stupid request, and she goes to find the Doctor (and his mysterious wife) to complain.She doesn't expect to find the ship's local genocidal maniac, and she certainly doesn't expect said maniac to be...purring?
Relationships: Nardole & Bill Potts, Twelfth Doctor/Missy
Comments: 22
Kudos: 50





	how sweet the moonlight sleeps

Bill bursts into the Doctor’s office early on a Saturday morning, her mind racing, shooting his empty desk a vicious glare as she rushes past. She prefers to sleep in on the weekends—who doesn’t?—but Nardole had texted her, “Urgent, TARDIS,” and Nardole texts her so rarely that whatever _that’s_ supposed to mean must be important.

She stops, abruptly, one step into the bridge, her brain racing to recalculate. Empty desk. _Empty desk._ She twirls slowly on her heels and steps back towards the desk, her fingers trailing absentmindedly across its surface. Yes, the chair across from her is most definitely empty, which means the Doctor is… somewhere else. Fresh fear rushes through her veins unbidden as she runs over Nardole’s text again, now cast in a much more sinister light.

Urgent. TARDIS.

It wouldn’t be concerning, had the Doctor been anyone else. She would’ve expected him to be busy, or asleep, or at home. But this is the _Doctor_. The Doctor should be here.

Bill scans the desk for any sign of a struggle, but finds none. In fact, the desk is neater than usual, and she isn’t sure if that’s something to give rise to concern. A pile of marked essays are set perfectly in the center of the desk, a stack of books beside it. The only disturbed piece of the desk is one of his pictures, upended, and she reaches out to readjust it. It’s the photo of the blonde woman. Bill wonders who she’s smiling for. 

She examines the desk again. Perfectly tidy. Perfect, except that the Doctor has simply up and disappeared. 

She snatches a sonic screwdriver from the mug of them that sits on his desk and clutches it in a too-tight fist, swallowing tightly. Bill isn’t entirely sure how the sonic is meant to _work_ , even after all this time under the Doctor’s tutelage, but she knows how to work the switch on the side and it is, at the very least, a slight comfort to have any kind of defence against the possible alien lifeforms lurking in the TARDIS at this very moment.

Armed and ready for whatever horrors lurk within, Bill creeps toward the police box again. The silence in the Doctor’s office is unsettling, the hair raising on her arms, her heart pounding violently in her ears. In her head, Nardole’s text plays over and over again as she enters the bridge: Urgent. TARDIS. Urgent. TARDIS. Urgent—

“TARDIS!” she squeaks aloud as she collides into Nardole, who’d appeared out of nowhere, sending her tumbling to the ground. Her hand reaches out, grasping the edge of the control panel, and she scrambles to her feet. “Oh. It’s you.”

Nardole blinks at her. “Who else would it be?” he says, undisturbed, and he offers a sunny wave. “Did you get my text?”

“Yeah,” says Bill incredulously, setting the sonic screwdriver on the panel and digging out her phone. “That’s why I’m here. What’s ‘Urgent. TARDIS.’ supposed to mean, anyway?”

Nardole grabs her phone, ignoring her squeal of protest, and reads over his own text, squinting. “I don’t know,” he admits. “I just thought it would get you here quickly.”

“Right,” says Bill, deflating. She takes her phone back and stuffs it into her pocket. The Doctor is still, worryingly, nowhere in sight, she notices. Her hand curls back around the sonic, just in case. “Where’s…”

“Asleep,” says Nardole offhandedly. He presses a button on the control panel and the lights around them dim, then flicker back to life. Bill isn’t sure whether or not she should be concerned. “That’s not why I needed you.”

“Yeah. Right. Uh… why _did_ you need me?” 

Nardole hums to himself, and at first Bill thinks he hasn’t heard her. She wonders if she needs to repeat herself. “Erm… jar.”

Bill scoffs, raising her eyebrows. “Jar?”

“Yes.” Nardole crouches down and picks something up beside him, which he presents to Bill with a carefree grin. She takes it, giving it a long, careful examination. It _is_ a jar. A jar of pickled… somethings, although Bill can’t quite make out _what_. They’re round and small and blue-ish, and they look a bit like eggs, except for the round splotch each of them sports. It occurs to her that they look like _eyeballs,_ and she grimaces. Eggs. They’re probably eggs.

“Pickles,” Bill says flatly. She likes Nardole normally. Bill isn’t the type to dislike people for no reason, and Nardole has given her plenty of reasons not to dislike him, including the countless times he’s saved her life. She tries to remind herself of this as her eyes flick from the jar to Nardole’s face, and then back to the jar, and then back to Nardole’s face. “You woke me up at half six in the morning for eggs.”

“Can’t open ‘em.”

Bill blinks once or twice, incredulous. “Half six.”

“My watch is broken.”

“Half six,” Bill repeats, and then, snapping herself out of her half-six haze: “Waking up early is awful. When do _you_ sleep?”

“Why would I?” says Nardole.

Bill decides not to dwell on that. “You couldn’t have asked somebody else? A student? A teacher? Your employer, maybe?”

“I’ve got an employer?”

“ _The_ _Doctor_?”

“Oh!” Nardole says, and nods, chewing his lip. “You’re right! He is my employer.”

“So why couldn’t you have asked him?” Bill questions, struggling to convince herself that she still likes this man, and that the Doctor wouldn’t be angry if she slapped him across the face once or twice. 

“He’s asleep.”

“ _I_ was asleep!” Bill protests. She wouldn’t have guessed that the Doctor needed sleep at all, with his Time Lord physiology, and all that. She’d assumed that he… photosynthesised, or something, like a plant, considering how many emails he sent her at ungodly hours of the morning. “Wait. The Doctor is asleep? You’re sure?”

“Yup.” Nardole winces. “ _Veeery_ asleep. Trust me, you don’t want to wake either of them up.”

“Them? _Either_ of them?”

Nardole winces again, looking a bit like a nervous puppy. “You know what? I think I’ve got these eggs on my own. You best go back to bed. Right-o. Off you go. Sweet dreams.” He plucks the jar from Bill’s grasp and sets it down again. “See you on Monday.”

“You can’t just!” Bill sputters. “You can’t just kick me out! Is that his wife? Is his wife here?” She studies his face. “It is, isn’t it. Oh, my God! You don’t want me to meet his wife!” Bill had been more than a little taken aback when the Doctor had first mentioned a wife. It isn’t that she thinks he’s unattractive—she’s sure that, to people who are interested in people like him, he’s quite the catch, even though she doesn’t exactly understand the appeal—but she had been pretty sure that he wasn’t particularly interested in, well, _women._ Especially not with the way he flirted with Nardole. 

Nardole turns his back on her, taking a brisk step away to fiddle with a panel of garishly colored buttons. “Good-bye, Bill Potts.”

“I’m going to go find him.” 

“I wouldn’t do that.”

Bill darts forward and steals the jar from beside his feet, tucking it into the crook of her elbow. “See you around, Nardole,” she says cheerfully, heading down a set of stairs placed conveniently beside her. 

“Oi! Leave the jar!”

“Let me sleep in!” 

Behind her, Nardole sighs in defeat. 

* * *

According to the Doctor, the TARDIS has taken a liking to Bill, and she hopes that means its winding corridors are less confusing than they could’ve been. This far into the guts of the ship, it’s dim, and she squints to see farther than an arm’s length ahead of her. In the past few minutes, she has successfully located four linen closets, a swimming pool, a rainforest, and a library, but the Doctor is still nowhere to be found.

Bill wonders, not for the first time, what the Doctor _does_ in his free time. He’s got to have some hobbies, other than illicit space travel and lurking about the university like a grumpy ghost with killer eyebrows. Maybe he reads a lot. Maybe he’s an Olympic swimmer on his off days. (Does the Doctor have off days?) 

She hoists the jar further up from where it was propped against her waist and squints at the wall. “Cooperate a little?” she says to the TARDIS at large, directing her gaze up to the ceiling. Bill wonders if it actually can understand her, like the Doctor so often claims. Certainly wouldn’t be the weirdest thing she’s seen. 

Either way, it doesn’t answer. 

Bill wonders what kind of woman the Doctor would marry. Another Time Lord, surely. She remembers the picture on his desk, the blonde woman with curly hair and smiling eyes. She isn’t entirely sure if the Doctor is married to her, but she wonders what the woman is like anyway. Pretty, at the very least. 

Absentmindedly, she leans up against a nearby door, tossing the sonic she’d taken earlier up into the air and trying to grab it as it tumbles to the ground. She leans back to catch it, and as she does, the door gives way beneath her and she stumbles past it and into the dark room beyond. 

Bill regains her footing, her eyes straining to adjust to the sudden and complete lack of light. She gropes around next to the door for a lightswitch. Her fingertips collide with something plasticky and button-like. She presses it. A dim yellow light floods the room, illuminating a bed surrounded by walls and walls of bookcases. Polaroids are pinned up to the shelves, pictures of various, unfamiliar faces, all labeled with similar handwriting in Sharpie. The most interesting facet of the room, though, is the Doctor, lying asleep and shirtless in bed, facing the ceiling, smiling fondly to an unknown dream friend. 

A woman is curled up around him, her dark hair pooling on his chest, and if Bill isn’t mistaken, she’s _purring._ Like a cat. A steady _rrrr, rrrrr, rrrrrrr_ rises and falls with her breaths, accentuating the pure picture of domestic content the bed contains. 

Bill’s eyes widen and her cheeks flush, all too aware that she’s intruded onto a scene she wasn’t meant to be privy to. She backs away, vowing to find Nardole and never speak of this again, but as she starts to leave, her ankle collides with the doorframe and she yelps aloud. “ _Shit_ ,” she mutters to herself, considering bolting away as fast as possible, when the woman stirs and her purrs cut off abruptly.

The woman shifts, untangling herself from the Doctor. “Mmm,” she mutters. “Who’s it?” Her voice is disturbingly familiar, but Bill isn’t quite able to place it. She sits up, her hair hanging over her shoulders in tangles and obscuring her face, and Bill recognises her dark band t-shirt. One of the Doctor’s. The woman throws her head back, runs her fingers through her hair, and adjusts to look properly at Bill with piercing blue eyes.

“Ah,” says Missy.

“What,” says Bill. Her thoughts take a few moments to catch up with each other: Missy, the Time Lord who burned up planets to rejoice in the flames, is cuddling the Doctor, and purring. Missy is a cat. Missy is cuddling the Doctor. _Missy_ is cuddling the _Doctor_ , and she is _purring._

Missy—burned-up planet Missy, genocidal Missy, prisoner Missy, _cuddly_ Missy—smirks. “Morning, you. Nardie’s pickles, is it?” she says, noting the jar in Bill’s hands. She doesn’t wait for Bill’s response. “Innuendo, almost. Please don’t think it’s intentional.”

“I—” Bill tries to find a polite way to ask somebody if she’s secretly a housecat. 

“Give them here, love. And quiet down a bit, poor Doctor’s not got any sleep for weeks and he desperately needs it. And close that mouth of yours. Flies, you know.”

“Flies?” Bill asks, because it’s the only thing she can think of. She finds herself at the bed, although she has no memory of walking there. 

Missy reaches up and closes Bill’s jaw, her fingers surprisingly soft. Up close, she smells like peaches. “They’ll zip right in and won’t zap out again. There you are. Hand them over.”

Bill gives her the jar. “You’re a murderer, though,” she says bluntly. 

“What’s that got to do with eggs?” 

Bill blinks. “Dunno,” she says. 

With a twist of Missy’s wrist, the lid of the jar is removed, and she pops an egg into her mouth. It makes a loud squelching noise. “I don’t see why he likes these eyes so much,” she muses.

“They’re not _for_ you!”

Missy frowns. “They aren’t?

“No, they aren’t.” Bill makes a face, and says, “Wait, they’re what?”

“Eyes. Never had a taste for ‘em, honestly.” Missy presses the jar back into Bill’s hands. Bill looks down at them and pulls a face, not sure if she wants to hold them anymore.

“That’s all, then? Yes? Good-night.” Missy waves her hand, in a sort of shooing motion, and lies back down. The Doctor’s arm wraps around her unconsciously, and Missy nuzzles his throat. Bill’s stomach feels queasy.

“But you’re a murderer,” she says again, gesturing to the Doctor. _A murderer who’s also a very clingy cat, apparently._ “And he just lets you…”

A single eye opens and surveys Bill with a sharp intimacy that makes her squirm. “You’re still here?” Missy asks with a frown, as if the question makes her weary. 

“The Doctor. He’s okay with this?”

Missy strokes the Doctor’s cheek with a possessive fingernail, and the Doctor murmurs something indistinct in his sleep. “He _asked_ for it, dearie. Likes the company. Ta-ta, now.” 

Bill is uncomfortably aware that, by now, two aliens have attempted to hurry her away within ten minutes or so. If they don’t want her around so badly, she thinks, why drag her out of bed at all? “I’m going to tell Nardole,” she warns. 

“Whatever,” Missy dismisses her. “Off with you.” 

“He’s not going to be happy.”

“Scram.”

“Really. I will.”

Missy groans and buries her face in the Doctor’s side. (Bill wants to wash her eyeballs out with bleach, or possibly rip them out altogether.) “I’m going to murder you with a kitchen knife next chance I get.”

“Okay! Okay. I get the message.” Bill rolls her eyes. “Uh. Sleep well? Say hi to the Doctor? Let’s never do this again. Toodles!” 

She closes the door behind her and takes a moment to lean against it, the early morning exhaustion finally settling in. Thanks to that bastard Nardole, it’s probably too late now for proper sleep, but she lets herself sink into glorious fantasies of staying in bed till the afternoon. Through the door,the purring starts up again: _rrrr, rrrrr, rrrrrrr,_ and Bill considers that in any other situation, it might almost be sweet. 

Almost.

**Author's Note:**

> please go follow petercapaldish & v4n1r on tumblr!!! godsends the both of them


End file.
